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Thanks to everyone who provided input (<Johnny5>INPUT!</Johnny5>) to my question yesterday about how one pronounces the final word when expanding the TCP/IP-centric initialism ‘TTL’. The results were, as expected, unanimous, and in favor of a short i, as in the first syllable of the word ‘livid’ and not as in the second syllable of the word ‘alive.’
While I knew this, there were a few things that caused me to doubt myself.
- I’m often incorrect.
- The author in question, Robert J. Sawyer, is a pretty net-savvy guy.
- The mispronunciation persisted through all three of the books in the trilogy in question (the WWW: (Wake|Watch|Wonder) series. I would have thought that, after the first book, someone would have waved their arms and corrected the narrators (multiple) as to the proper pronunciation of the word. But, it seems that either didn’t happen, or an executive decision was made to keep on keepin’ on with the standing error.
Anyway, I thank you all for confirming that I’m not completely off my rocker. It’s always good to have some external validation of that.
It’s not just a matter of pronunciation: with the short ‘i’, the acronym is an expiration date; with the long ‘i’, the acronym would indicate future availability.
covert-ops.org isn’t answering. ns2.unreal.net seems dead and ns.gweep.net is refusing the query.
Jeff: Hm. Intriguing. I think I know what’s going on, but will need to wait for someone who’s currently in transit to take a look. Thanks for the head’s up!